Today was the "annual when we can manage" multiple birthday party with two friends whose birthdays are almost-nearly within a week of mine: DRW, whose is a week ahead of RLD's, and mine (last out of the gate, though actually not as I'm older than they are. In that we're stairsteps and DRW is youngest. It was the perfect time to inaugurate NewTable for a sizeable crowd. (Well, ten.)

This is actually before everyone was there, and Rancherfriend was about to uncover the pico de gallo. Once we started eating, I wasn't taking pictures.

A couple of days before, looking toward the main garden area, the Mexican plum was in full bloom and the redbuds were strong enough to show:

By the time of the party, the snowy-white plum was turning dusty rose as the white petals fell and the pink stamens showed. You can just see the base of one raised planting base (which has a trellis on which the peas are zooming upward) in the left image.

A week ago, this raised bed's peas had just started blooming; the salad greens in front of them were (are) delicious. Today the salad stuff had grown to almost overflow the bed's edge, and the peas are almost halfway up the top section of trellis. This bed, placed for winter gardening, has the long axis more E/W and thus has more sun exposure. The other beds are at right angles to it, off to the right. We've been enjoying salads from this bed, and the peas are just starting to be ready to eat (edible-pod peas.) At the party we had salad from it, but not peas. (Had to add tomatoes & carrots from store.) The west end has some herbs. Other beds have onions, radishes, and carrots (still very tiny) at this season.

Birthdays, spring, and celebration

And I am very envious of your long growing season in TX. Here in Minneapolis area, we finally got the snow that we'd been missing (so there will be water in the ground when spring does arrive). However, we are band 6 on the seed packets... no real planting till May or sometimes June depending on the plant. April if we're really lucky, but that's pretty much the start-indoors-time for any gardeners with long-growing plants. And in Sept, it's pretty much harvest time.